Original lesson: Bendy Blues by Chris Harrington

Hello everyone lets see how this one goes, wish you all a good day.

He there

Nice choice of lesson. It's an opportunity to learn some solid blues phrasing and dynamics. I can clearly notice you care for the tone, timing and articulation. By "care" I mean it's visible and audiable that you focus on these and try to respect each detail but I'm sure that same as we can hear, you also notice moments when you loose some notes at faster runs. It's a regular issue in your case (in this particular lesson). somehow I belive you try "too hard" to be precise and you tense to reach every note inbetween accents. That causes these fast runs to sound a little square and make you feel uncomfortable while playing. The truth about fast playing is...focus only on accents. Let the notes between "just happen". Don't try to make them too loud, too strong. You will loose too much strength and control over the lick. Sometimes we need to let ourselfs to be lead by the instrument

Just to clarify...it's NOT totally wrong. It's just a detaild to polish things up and make you play and feel even more comfortable, which is being immediately captured by listeners....even those non-guitar-related.

One tip about the reverb...original lesson has more a kind of slap-back (higher predelay value...also darker and with shorter decay/length/dampening). In your case it sounds more like between the hall and "bathroom" which not necessary fits the "right in face" overall track "room placement". It's a subjective thing just worth considering.

As for overall tone you did pretty well considering you did this with humubcking pickup in the neck position. Well done.

You have that "push through the string" picking execution that is crutial for blues playing. That's spot on and that's a great advantage of yours that need some practise to just sync both hand and you're read to...rock(?)...BLUES!

Oh, and please
...NEVER DO WHAT YOU DID WITH A LAST NOTE IN THIS TAKE!
It need to be bend. That a standard example of blues tension suspension. If you keep the note the way you did it simply sound like a mistake/wrong note.

Please consider that the grade is related to what kind of mistakes and how much of them happens in your take. Unfortunately almost every fast run in this take has some notes missing or syn issues. This is why the technical aspect doesn't let us give you higher grades BUT....keep in mind that for your overall sense of dynamics, phrasing and feel you would definitely got a higher grade because you got "THIS SOMETHING" that is a core of ability to be a musician....not only a player, but there is a lot of work in front of you, to make your fingers let your translate the music in you, at the same level you can feel and uderstand it. Don't waste it!

Hi mate!

I'm here just for grading since we are working on this one at the mentoring program (Gab's Army) and there you have my comments.

Keep on the hard work!

Well done mate, and great so see you play that guitar. I know it had to travel quite a bit to get to you

This is a great choice of lesson - I consider Chris to be in total control of this kind of blues. You can see he's got all the details down as far as tone (hand sync), timing, vibrato etc go.

I can aslo see you have put a lot of work into this and you're playing is pretty close to being truly enjoyable. Darius pointed out many of the important specifics you should address.

I don't really mind a few errors here and there (I do them myself all the time btw! ) - however I do care about the feeling of the performance. And as is often the case with REC recordings - we can see students are really focused on avoiding errors. This is def understandable - but it results in a playing style that is a bit ahead of the beat and overall does not give a relaxed impression.

So you could try recording this on different occasions during the day, and then see if you think it impacted the performance. For example you could try recording in the beginning of the session, maybe after a warm shower, in the middle of the night etc. It's all about getting to know yourself and understand when you are most relaxed - or simply ready to perform.

I hope it makes sense!

I am giving you a 6 - keep up the great work!

Pass: 6